Kitāb al-Mashāʿir

Mulla Sadra's 'Book of Witnessings' — concise statement of his metaphysics of existence (wujūd)

Tradition: Transcendent Theosophy (al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya) / Twelver Shiʿi Islamic philosophy

Mulla Sadra's 'Kitāb al-Mashāʿir' — concise statement of his metaphysics of wujūd (existence)

Composed in mid-career (precise dates uncertain; Mulla Sadra's mature period is roughly 1610s-1640s), 'Kitāb al-Mashāʿir' (Book of Witnessings / Book of Metaphysical Penetrations) is Mulla Sadra's concise systematic statement of his metaphysics of wujūd (existence) — one of his most accessible works and the principal short-form entry to his Transcendent Theosophy (al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya). The treatise sets out the three central Sadrian doctrines that constitute his distinctive philosophical contribution: (1) Aṣālat al-wujūd (the primacy of existence over essence) — against the Suhrawardian Illuminationist position that essence (māhiyya) is primary and existence is a derivative-conceptual abstraction, Sadra argues that existence is the fundamental ontological reality and essence is the abstracted conceptual aspect; (2) Tashkīk al-wujūd (the gradational unity of existence) — existence is one but admits of degrees of intensity; the divine existence is at the maximum, prime matter at the minimum, with intermediate degrees of created existence between; (3) Al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya (substantial motion) — the substantial dimension itself, not just accidents, is in continuous motion; the universe is not a static ladder of beings but a continuously-flowing process of substantial intensification toward higher modes of existence. The treatise also treats: knowledge as a mode of existence; the soul's substantial motion through embodied life toward post-mortem actualisation; the nature of the divine attributes. The book is one of the principal compressed statements of Sadra's Transcendent Theosophy and the standard short introduction for students of Sadrian philosophy.